Friends or food? Big data reveals what China thinks of dog meat

Caged dogs are being transferred from a zoo to dog meat restaurants, in Changsha, capital of Central China’s Hunan province.

笼子中的狗是由一家动物园转运到长沙市的狗肉餐馆的——长沙市是位于中国中部的湖南省的省会。

Yulin, China’s dog meat festival is held every June on Xiazhi, the longest day in the Chinese lunar calendar. But what does the public really think about eating dog meat?

中国玉林狗肉节在每年六月夏至这天举行，这是中国农历上白昼时间最长的一天。然而人们对于吃狗肉一事究竟如何看待呢？

On Twitter, thousands of tweets bearing the hashtag # StopYulin2015 were posted every hour on Friday alone, with many users calling on their followers to sign a petition to stop the Yulin festival.

在推特上，随着许多用户号召其粉丝签署请愿书以抵制玉林狗肉节，仅在周五这天，每个小时都有成千上万贴着“2015阻止玉林”标签的推文发布。

As of 9 pm, Friday, more than 2.3 million users had posted messages opposing the practice. Similar campaigns were also seen on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblog website.

周五晚九点时，已有超过230万用户发帖来反对这一行为。相似活动也在新浪微博这个类似于推特的中国微博网站举行。

#Yulindogmeatfestival was used in more than 350,000 posts, making it the highest-trending hashtag on the issue.

“玉林狗肉节”这一标签被用于超过35万篇帖子中，使其成为这一话题中的最热门标签。

Topics with tags such as # saynotoYulindogmeatfestival attracted wide attention, and many retweets.

带有像“对玉林狗肉节说不”这样标签的话题，吸引了大量关注及转发。

However, contrary to the buzz on Twitter, data revealed by search engine Baidu paints a different picture; suggesting a decline in interest in the festival.

然而，与推特上这些活动的如火如荼相反，百度搜索引擎所显示的数据描绘了一幅与此不同的画面：人们对于狗肉节的兴趣正在减少。

According to Baidu Index, searches for "dog meat" over the past seven days had dropped 38 percent year on year, while "dog meat festival" had 57 percent less searches.

百度指数显示，过去七天内“狗肉”一词的搜索量与去年同期相比下降了38%，而“狗肉节”一词的搜索量下降了57%。

However, it revealed that the most-asked questions related to dog meat were: "How to cook it" and "when is the festival".

然而数据显示，被问的最多的与狗肉有关问题是：“如何烹制狗肉”以及“何时是狗肉节”。

In regions like Yulin in southwest China, dog meat is seen as a delicacy. However, a growing number of people oppose the tradition, on the grounds that dogs are pets and eating dog meat may cause disease.

在像玉林这样的中国西南地区，狗肉被视为美味佳肴。然而，由于狗被作为宠物饲养，并且吃狗肉可能会导致疾病，越来越多的人开始反对这项传统。

On Thursday, Yulin government reiterated that it did not support the "so-called festival" and promised to come down hard on anyone caught stealing or poisoning dogs.

玉林政府在周四再次表明其并不支持“所谓的节日”，并许诺任何偷狗或将狗毒死的人都将受到严厉惩罚。

In 2011, Jinhua, another city in east China’s Zhejiang Province canceled its 600-year old dog meat festival after massive opposition.

2011年，位于中国东部的浙江省的另一个城市——金华，在遭到大规模反对之后，取消了其延续了600年的狗肉节。

完成阅读

来源:英语新闻网站爱语吧作者:刘佳